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Perlin Noise and its Application

Standard

Although the term Perlin Noise may seemed to be unfamiliar, but its application goes to the contemporary movies and video games in the last 20 years. The noise was developed by Ken Perlin for the 1982 film TRON. The task was to develop a more fluid and natural appearance for 3D objects for the film. Normally image texture is used as the material for the 3D object, but Ken Perlin used a random mathematical formula. “Perlin noise is simply a well-crafted pseudo-random function which is designed to look controlled and natural.” The technique revolutionize the field of motion graphics as it allows the 3D object much more efficiently at that time where computer memory was very limited, as a mathematical formula uses much fewer memory than a large image map and it was easier to apply the noise formula than using the UV method that wrap an image around a 3D object. Perlin noise was very efficient and effective that the graphics industry adopted them as standard techniques (Williams, 2012). In 1997 Ken received an Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science for his work. The awards says, “The development of Perlin Noise has allowed computer graphics artists to better represent the complexity of natural phenomena in visual effects for the motion picture industry.” (Perlin, n.d.)

The application of Perlin noise in the Motion Graphic and Video Games is very wide as it is the foundation of various systematic texture and modelling algorithms. Perlin Noise is generated mathematically like a graph, thus for different dimensional graph its function also varies. The application of Perlin Noise are:

Landscape or Terrain

By Using the 2 Dimensional Perlin Noise as a height map it can create an interesting shape of terrain. The shape of it can be easily calculated, stretch indefinitely and it is calculated to the very detail (Figure 2) (Tulleken, 2009).

2 Dimensional Perlin Noise is mostly use to create texture, and its basic application is to map it with a gradient. This will result in attractive maps or fire effects as shown in figure 5. The noise also allows the blending in between 2 textures (Figure 6).